My parents house in Jakarta is only three doors away from a superb family restaurant selling char siu - Chinese glazed roast pork and siu yuk - Chinese crispy skin roast pork. Whenever I have the chance to visit my parents, I always make sure to drop by and buy loads! But I can only fly home so many times, and thus, must find a reliable recipe to reproduce my favorite food. This is, by far, my favorite recipe for char siu. I will be the first to admit that my neighbor’s version is still…

Empal is a very popular Javanese dish, typically made from thinly pounded beef shank, cooked in spices, and finally fried. It can be a pretty laborious dish, and Mom usually just buy them from her favorite empal specialty store. I recreate this dish with shredded chicken thigh meat, which cuts the cooking time significantly, but the taste is pretty much there. I hope you will give this ayam suwir saus empal - chicken in spices & coconut milk sauce recipe a try.

It is not the height of summer yet, but the heat is already unbearable. If you need a quick cook meal where you don’t need to spend much time in the kitchen, this Indian keema ground beef curry might just be the answer. It is very easy, and you can serve it with rice, or flat bread of your choice like naan, or pita :)

People who have busy schedules need to learn how to make this Chinese ground beef meat sauce. When your fridge is stocked with this meat sauce, you can make meat sauce rice bowl, or meat sauce noodles whenever you need a quick and delicious meal.

Tori no tatsuta age - deep fried marinated chicken to me is a very underrated Japanese fried chicken dish. At a glance it looks very similar to the more popular tori no karaage. Both are bite-sized fried chicken thigh, both are popular izakaya fare, but I think tori no tatsuta age wins in term of flavor.

When you need a quick chicken dish, this ayam nasu palekko - Makassar spicy chicken dish, might just be your answer. It is very fragrant and very citrusy from lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. It is also savory, sweet, spicy, and tangy. Basically it has everything, and I am sure the umami is built in somewhere, because we sure couldn’t stop eating this and it was a very very satisfying lunch :)

Pineapple jam sticky rice flour bread rolls. I have plenty of pineapple jam leftover from making pineapple jam squares, so I turn them into fillings for this bread rolls that is slightly unusual than my regular ones because the addition of sticky rice flour (a.k.a. glutinous rice flour) to make it slightly chewier, but ultimately, still very delicious.

Most Indonesians prepare nastar (pineapple tarts) for festive occasions, such as Chinese New Year, Christmas, or Idul Fitri. They are delicious, but can be time consuming to make. I only make nastar once a year, and for any other day when I need a quick nastar fix, I make this pineapple jam squares instead. They are just as delicious, but come together very easily and quickly.

If you take classic teriyaki sauce and amp it up with onion and garlic, you get this even more delicious onion teriyaki sauce. Here I pour the sauce over simple pan chicken breasts to get this pan fried chicken onion teriyaki sauce, and I serve this with steamed white rice to soak up all the sauce. This onion teriyaki sauce is definitely a keeper and you will want to pair it with beef steaks, or pork chops, or even pan fried tofu!

When I am in a cooking rut, I tend to fall back to easy and quick recipes that get me reliably delicious result time after time. One such recipe is this Thai red curry chicken & cauliflower dish. In all honesty, the cauliflower is incidental. It just so happen to be what I have when I cooked this dish. You can pretty much use any vegetables you have. I have tried everything from carrots, potatoes, broccoli, eggplants, pretty much anything you can think of and so far none turns out to be a…